Semiconductor devices are used in a variety of electronic applications, such as personal computers, cell phones, digital cameras, and other electronic equipment. Semiconductor devices are typically fabricated by sequentially depositing insulating or dielectric layers, conductive layers, and semiconductive layers of material over a semiconductor substrate, and patterning the various material layers using lithography to form circuit components and elements thereon.
As the semiconductor industry has progressed into nanometer technology process nodes, such as 5 nm nodes, in pursuit of higher device density, higher performance, and lower costs. The shrinking dimension of the semiconductor devices presents challenges in semiconductor processing steps. There is a need to improve efficiency and reduce cost for various semiconductor processing steps.